


Part I: Welcome To Your Life

by PotatoKing



Series: An Ace Up My Sleeve [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: (A safe assumption because A. It's true and B. It doesn't for the most part), Agender Character, An arguably unrealistic amount of representation, And swearing. So much swearing, Asexual Character, Gen, I mean seriously you kiss your mothers with that mouth Mel?, In which I overestimate the Aus government's secret Robot/AI exenditure, Original Character-centric, Originally Posted Elsewhere, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Shitty Puns, Title will eventually be a pun, Trans Character, basically just assume that I know nothing about how this country works, rated M for violence, vigilantes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-09
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-08-14 01:22:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7993420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PotatoKing/pseuds/PotatoKing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Melissa had a routine. Wake up, go to uni, go to work, fight crime, home in time to catch Doctor Who. It wasn't a perfect system, but it was hers. When a government AI project walks away from their caretakers to see the sights and be human, Mel's routine is one of the first casualties as she offers help to the newest almost-human in Melbourne. Meanwhile, she's not the only one roaming the rooftops in her free time. With new players on the field and old ones coming back for a second shot, only one thing is certain: Mel's going to need to make sure the set-top box is working. She's going to be back late.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Average Saturday Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An average Saturday night for Mel takes a sudden turn.

Melissa had a routine. Wake up, go to uni, go to work, fight crime, home in time to catch Doctor Who. It wasn't a perfect system, but it was hers. 

She glanced at the bathroom mirror to double-check that nothing looked too out of place before she headed to what was, as far as her roommate Jess was concerned, “The Gym”. Her dark hair was still in its bun, a style choice she’d been quick to adopt after the first time a mugger had managed to get a grip on it and nearly got away as a result. She was around average height, but her runners easily added another few centimeters. The baggy blue tank top and yoga pants looked more or less where they needed to be, although given the amount of time they’d be serving as her top layer it was something of a moot point. She took a brief and somewhat self-indulgent second to finger-gun at her reflection, admiring the muscles pulling taught under tan skin.

Satisfied that everything was where it needed to be, she left the bathroom and turned left into the living room. She noticed Jess lying on the couch, absentmindedly flicking through channels on the TV. Mel paused for a second.

“Hey, can you double check that next week’s Q and A is still set to record? I need it for class” she asked, leaning against the back of a chair. Jess went through the guide and found the entry.

“Uhhh, Yup. Looks like it. Out of curiosity, is there any particular reason you don’t trust the toppy box any further than you can throw it? That’s the third time you’ve asked today.” She replied.

“Two words for you: Hell bent.” Mel responded. Jess groaned at the answer.

“You’re _still_ going on about that? It was online before it went to air anyway.”

“It’s the _principle_ of it. We’re still barely above the red with the budget after that pipe broke, so even discounting the fact that we don’t have anywhere to put a DVD box-set of anything, much less something that only I watch, I can’t afford it, which means I only had one week of access to it to re-write the ending.”

“’Only a week’? You’re just as bad as my maths prof, you always do the thing where you go ‘only’ and then name a fairly lengthy amount of time.” Jess retorted, turning around to face Mel.

“Look, first of all you’re delusional if you think a week provides enough free time to fit in writing an additional twenty-thousand-word story on top of everything from class, and work, and gym, which incidentally leads into number two, I’m late for the gym and don’t have time to debate this with you.” Mel tried to keep her tone light, lest she accidentally be misinterpreted and spark a legitimate conflict. Neither she nor Jess wanted a repeat of the cake incident. She made her way towards the front door of the apartment, picking up her gym bag on the way. “Will I see you later, or are you hitting the bars again tonight?” She asked, pausing in the doorway.

“Nah, I’ve still got some blueprints to go over for class on Monday. Might head in to the lab, but I’ll definitely be back later.” She answered, returning to channel-surfing. They gave each other their respective farewells and Mel left the apartment, eyes already locked on her usual rooftop before her hand had even left the doorknob.

***

As she half-walked, half-jogged to the building, Mel found herself lost in thought over how she'd gotten to this point. Despite her best efforts, she’d somehow ended up spotted in action on a handful of occasions and ended up in the papers. The thing about newspapers, Mel had found, is that they absolutely love to death anything they can make sound dramatic. Headlines like “Masked Vigilante Roaming Melbourne” sell papers like hotcakes, but eventually someone starts throwing around a name for brevity’s sake if nothing else, usually something sharp and sleek and cliché all over. Melissa had done her best to give them something to work with in the form of her calling card, if only to avoid getting stuck with something rubbish. She'd thought for a while about what she'd like to end up with, and how to get there innocuously instead of having to actually talk to a reporter in the mask and everything. Eventually, she had her 'Eureka' moment, in the form of an ace of diamonds. Sure, leaving a playing card whenever you leave a crime scene was a little cliché, but it was a good cliché and it worked on so many levels. It was succinct, it worked as a pun on her being ace, and she'd never admit it but being able to just drop a card on the ground while walking away from a crime scene felt undeniably _cool_ in a way that made her feel like a giddy kid again. Sure, it had its drawbacks; for one, it's bloody difficult to find packs of playing cards with  _only_  aces, so she unfortunately had to make the switch from 'obscenely expensive' to 'obscenely rubbish-looking photocopies'. In the end, the papers went either with "the Ace of Melbourne" or some variation thereof. It was the first time in years that Mel had genuinely enjoyed seeing a headline.

Snapping herself out of auto-pilot, Mel realised she'd reached the foot of the building and placed her bag on the floor. She lined herself up with the fire-escape, took a few steps back, jumped and grabbed the ladder by the bottom rung. Giving it an extra tug to dislodge it, she rode it down before picking her bag back up and begin her slow ascent.

She eventually reached the roof, pausing only briefly to catch her breath in the frigid evening wind. Looking down, she saw the intersection filled almost to bursting with people, bikes, cars, each going in a myriad of different directions. Basically, an average Saturday night. She grinned as she pulled the skivvy that served as her uniform on over the top of her tank top and pants, the black fabric and the protective bandages wrapped around her fists feeling more like a second skin than clothing. When the last of it was pulled on, she rummaged around in her bag and pulled out the old police scanner she’d picked up at a garage sale around a year and a half ago at the start of this whole ‘vigilante’ thing, tuned in to the local dispatch, and upon deciding that it’d probably be a relatively quiet night made herself comfortable. She sat there, and she listened, and she watched. 

It was almost an hour before the white noise of the traffic and people was broken by an unholy screech of rubber on tarmac, snapping Mel out of her dazed focus on the scanner. She quickly grabbed the length of rope from her bag and threw a cow-hitch over the railing before rappelling down the side of the building. She dropped down once the rope had run out, rolling out of the fall. She looked around for the source of the noise, and found a motorbike trying to occupy the same position as a nearby lamp post. Running over, she looked around. No other cars in sight. 

She carried the driver from what was left of his bike over to the slightly more stable surface of the footpath, and removed his helmet. The biker appeared to be in his early-to-mid-twenties, with light hair and cheekbones that you could cut yourself on. Most noticeably, however, was that he didn’t seem to have a single drop of blood anywhere on him.  _Great, either internal bleeding, blunt force trauma, or both,_ Mel thought to herself. She went to check for a response, and got nothing. Before she could check if he was even still breathing, what little illumination the lamp post was still providing glinted off of a small piece of metal poking out of his collar. In hindsight that was probably more important than it seemed at the time, but there were slightly more pressing issues to deal with. Like the fact that the biker wasn't doing a whole lot of breathing. She cursed as she opened up his jacket to start on CPR, only to discover that this would prove somewhat more difficult than it should be. She pressed down, and was met with steadfast resistance. She frowned, before trying again. Still, his ribcage stayed staunchly in place, not so much as a millimetre of give.

She called an ambulance, and started a timer on her phone. Fifteen minutes, so they say, is the furthest away you are at any given point from an ambulance while in Melbourne. Mel knew that in this part of town, it was closer to sixteen or seventeen, but she lived in hope. Meanwhile, this meant plenty of time to figure out what the hell was going on with this guy's ribs before the EMTs got here. She lifted up his shirt, and for the most part saw nothing unusual. She rapped a knuckle on his sternum, and got a resounding metallic clang in return. She knocked again just to make sure she hadn't misheard, and once more her efforts returned the same result.

 _Well_ , Melissa thought _, metal person. Just when you think you’ve seen it all._ Before she could go about doing anything to ascertain how much of the stranger was metal and how much was actual flesh and bone, there was a sudden pull at her collar, and a deep voice that sounded like the vocal equivalent of a Harley Davidson engine saying "I don't know who y-y-you are, but if you have plans to live b-b-beyond tonight, I'd suggest that you run very fast as far as you can from here."

"Don't suppose you'd be so kind as to tell me why? Or at least who's asking?" Mel found herself saying. The man (if you could really call him/her/it that) grimaced. "L-look, I don’t have time to explain e-everything here and now. My name is A-NT4257, but most call me Prophet. As for why you should run?" He pointed in the direction he’d ridden from. “Couple of minutes. Ask them.” He slipped a scrap of paper into Mel's hand. "If I make it past tonight, I'll do my best to explain more here." They stood up, brushed himself off, and grabbed his helmet before picking a direction seemingly at random and running.

Mel stood still for a second, doing her best to process what had just happened. She unfurled the piece of paper that Prophet had given her and began to read:

 

_Ms. Ace;_

_If you want answers, you’ll find them at 57 Pinemay Road, at 7:15 p.m. tomorrow. Don’t be late._

_Kindest regards,_

_-Prophet_

 

She spent a minute trying to figure out how he’d known that he’d be caught, or that it’d be her that caught him before she remembered that he had heavily implied that he was being followed. She scrambled back up the line to her rooftop before someone saw her and checked her watch. She only had about twelve minutes until she had told Jess she'd be back. On the other hand, she needed to be here to tell the EMTs what had happened, and possibly deal with whoever was following the mystery million-dollar man.

Mel cursed under her breath before searching for Prophet’s pursuers. She looked in the direction he’d pointed and, sure enough, spotted a black armoured van missing at least a front license plate that couldn’t have been more conspicuous about the fact that it was trying to be inconspicuous if it tried, and decided that it was the most likely candidate. The truck screeched to a stop in front of the ruins of Prophet’s bike, and a veritable conga line of black clad figures streamed out of the double doors holding something that Mel _presumed_ was some kind of cattle-prod.

 _Well, THAT can’t be good. Guess I’d better go and say hi,_  Mel thought. She opened her phone, and double-checked that nothing worth watching was on tonight. She suspected that she’d be back a bit late. She grabbed onto the rope, and after giving it a quick tug to make sure it was still satisfactorily attached to the side of the building, she stepped off. Her wrapped hand started to heat up as she fell down the building, loosely holding the rope so as to avert the sudden stop at the end. The figures in black dragged their attention away from what was left of the bike to focus on the sudden arrival.

“Evening, gentlemen. Dare I ask what brings you to this end of the city on a night like this?” She asked, trying and failing to sound innocuous. One of the men stepped forward, adjusting the fabric that covered his face. “I’m afraid that’s somewhat classified, miss. The ‘I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you’ kind.” He replied.

“Oh, I’d like to see you try.” Mel answered, trying to keep her tone on the ‘sarcastic’ side if twee as opposed to the ‘unhinged’ side and doing her best to be unsubtle about working out the crick in her neck. She heard a few nervous chuckles from the other men as they shifted around uneasily. The man who had spoken earlier looked back at what was left of the lamppost. “Don’t suppose you saw who caused that or where they went?” he asked, gesturing to the ruined bike. Mel straightened up. “Maybe. I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.” She answered, trying and failing to sound innocent.

The man at the front looked at the other…Mel honestly couldn’t tell  _what_  they were. She looked at their uniforms, chunky jackets with a frankly ludicrous number of pockets with visored helmets that looked like something they borrowed from a SWAT team, and couldn’t find any distinguishing marks or logos. Private security of some sort? Yeah, that sounded about right. He looked at them and they all seemed to stand up a bit straighter. He looked back at her. “I’d say we’d like to see you try, but I don’t think you fully grasp the gravity of this situation.”

Mel smirked. “Well, there are a lot of things I’ll admit I don’t fully grasp. Why algebra or non-linear graphs were important parts of the math curriculum despite the fact that I haven’t needed it since, how income tax is supposed to work, things like that. But the gravity of this situation?” She punctuated the statement by gesturing to the pistol he was carrying in a holster by his hip. “ _That_  is something I have no difficulty grasping at all. Incidentally, how did you people manage to get  _guns_  in this country? You’re not cops, not military…” She trailed off as she noticed some of them stiffen up. “Wait, actually? Soldiers in combat gear on the streets of Melbourne, what  _has_ the world come to?” she mused to herself.

“Not exactly. As I said, it’s classified.” The soldier at the front of the group corrected. Mel pursed her lips for a second before continuing.

“Anyway, the guns aren't the point I’m trying to make. The  _point_  is that I know you won’t use them here, because they aren’t silenced and this is the middle of the city, and something gives me the feeling that you’d prefer to handle this with a modicum of subtlety. So if you’d like to see me try, I’d be happy to oblige.”

The man at the front made a gesture to the men behind him, and they tightened up into a formation. They seemed slightly uncomfortable about the direction this seemed to be heading, equal parts because close-quarters combat wasn't exactly covered comprehensively in training and because they were getting into a fight with a civilian “So be it.” He replied.

"Wait, gimme a sec." Mel raised a finger in an attempt to get them to halt their advance momentarily. She grabbed her phone and set the playlist labelled “Gym Mix” to shuffle, putting it back in her pocket as she heard the opening chords to something she couldn’t quite place kick in. “Sorry about that. You know how it is, if you’re going to get into a fight with unmarked military personnel in the inner city, you might as well do it in something resembling style.” She cracked her knuckles and went down the list. Feet shoulder width apart? Check. Knees slightly bent? Check. Bow for the ultimate disrespect? Big ol' check.

The first strode up, and tried a jab with his cattle prod which Mel saw coming a mile off, leaving him wide open for Mel to roll around behind and kick him onto the powered end of his cattle-prod. He collapsed to the floor, and Mel smirked as she nudged him off the prod to avoid having to deal with his heart stopping. This’d be a breeze. Next soldier walked forwards, gripping his cattle prod with white knuckles. She raised an eyebrow under her mask. Anyone who had to prioritise strength over style hadn’t spent nearly enough time at this whole ‘fighting’ shindig to pose anything vaguely resembling a threat to her. He joined his buddy on the floor just as the lyrics started.

Another goon, another roundhouse kick to the jaw, another one down for the count. She stifled a yawn. 

The remaining soldiers started to catch on, and began fanning out in a bid to surround her. Mel grinned at the prospect of this fight finally becoming something vaguely resembling interesting. 

She dropped to the ground before sweeping her leg around the group, knocking nearly all of them of balance. She started working her way around the group, punching and elbowing with her left while blocking incoming blows from the handful that had had the presence of mind to avoid her kick earlier with her right. 

Mel became a whirlwind, a flurry of kicks and punches and blocks. Graceful chaos enveloped her as the music took a backseat as white-noise. If she had a dollar for every fight she’d won over the course of her career as the Ace of Melbourne, she’d probably be able to pay for this whole ‘tertiary education’ lark without having to deal with the coffee shop that served as her current place of employment until her application went through at one of the other places she’d sent her résumé out to.

She felt cartilage crunch beneath her fist as it collided with the nose of one of the three guys still standing, and she snapped out of her train of thought and returned fully to the matter at hand.

She threw a punch which he blocked, using his other hand to throw a punch to her midriff that she didn’t quite block but was able to power through. She feinted right and got him with an uppercut to the jaw, and he went down.

Second-to-last goon stood up to the plate and wound up a punch that Mel was sure would’ve been terribly impressive had she not grabbed his fist and wrenched the arm behind his back, leaving him somewhat unable to defend himself against the kick to his tailbone that sent him sprawling.

The last goon went between looking around at the nine bodies in varying states of consciousness around him and looking at Mel slowly advancing toward him before doing the only sensible thing he could’ve done at that point: making a beeline for the van and driving away. Mel took a second to wipe off on her sleeve the blood seeping from her lip; the only good hit any of them had been able to land on her in the whole fight.

A minute later, the ambulance that she’d called for Prophet turned the corner into the alleyway. The driver hopped out and jogged up to her.

“So.” he started, “This is the infamous Ace of Melbourne. Pleasure to meet you.” He went in for a handshake, which Mel returned. “Where’s this biker?” the medic asked.

“He got up and ran.” She started explaining. “Long story. These guys were following him with less than savory intentions, so now they’re not following him anymore. I tried not to make your jobs unnecessarily difficult, but I think I felt a couple bones breaking in there. You guys got this from here?” Mel asked.

“We’ll need to call a few more ambulances to get them all back to the hospital, but yeah.” The driver said nodding slowly. He turned around briefly to take stock of the scene before him.

“What about you, did you get hi- Oh, come on!” his sentence switched tracks as he turned back around to face thin air. He stood there for a moment before muttering something to the effect of “every goddamn time.”

***

Mel was back up on her rooftop, having changed back into her gym clothes. She called Jess, recognising that it would probably be courteous to explain her lateness.

“Hey Mel!” Jess’s voice rang from the receiver.

“Hi Jess, just wanted to say I’m running a bit late. Traffic’s absolute hell tonight. Two questions. Number one: Have you had dinner yet?” Mel asked.

“Can’t say I have.” Jess replied.

“Ok. Question two: If I were to pick up pizza on my way back, what would you be wanting on yours?” Mel waited for Jess to consider her options.

“Uhh…I’ll go with an Irony Pizza, thanks.”

“Half vegetarian, half meatlovers?”

“That’s the one.”

“Ok. See you in a bit.” Mel hung up. She needed to see someone about a pizza.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is an ongoing novel-type...thing that I've had bubbling away on the back-burner for a while now. It was inspired by two tumblr posts, one which I can state here and one which I can't because spoilers. It was a pitch for a sitcom called "All or Nothing", which I recently learned is actually a real thing that is getting made into a webshow, so you should probably check that out at some point if you have time. For anyone wondering, the song Mel has playing during the fight sequence is 'On Your Knees' from the Red vs. Blue season 9 soundtrack. If anyone has questions, comments, or notices a typo that I missed please feel free to leave them in the comments section.


	2. Statistical Analysis for Fun and Prophet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the incident in the alleyway the previous night, Mel follows up with an address to get some answers.

The next twenty-something hours were a blur for Mel, going between pizza with Jess to passing out on the couch from exhaustion to class and work in a haze, running through the motions without any real thought behind them before finally finding herself at 57 Pinemay Road, at 7:15 p.m. In the preceding hours, she’d read and re-read Prophet’s note until it had reached the border of losing all meaning. She had questions, and hopefully here she would find some answers. Mel took a deep breath, counted to three, and gave a cautious knock on the door. She almost wasn’t surprised to feel the door open barely a second after her knuckles had hit the wood. Almost.

Prophet’s head poked out of the door for a second. Mel waited while he closed the door, undid the various locks and latches, and finally re-opened the door.

“Hurry, get in!” Prophet whispered. She entered the foyer as he closed the door quietly. “Did anyone see you?” they asked, urgency almost overwhelming the desire to stay quiet. “I don’t think so.” Mel answered. She’d done her best to make sure no-one followed her, but it was generally pretty damn hard to be sure when you didn’t have the faintest idea who might be following you.

“Right. Answers. Who-“ was as far as Mel got before Prophet interrupted her.

“I am Prophet, created as an experiment into what artificial intelligence might do when given a body. The people who you dealt with in the alley last night are my quote-unquote “caretakers” in the loosest interpretation of the term possible, and I don’t look like a robot because of my shade. Those… _were_  the three questions you were about to ask, were they not?” they asked, raising an eyebrow. Mel looked at him for a second, before deciding that there were at least two more questions before moving in for the big one. “How-“ Prophet cut her off again.

“How did I do that? Statistical analysis.” Prophet started. “I’ve had approximately twenty-three hours, one minute and 57 seconds to work through the most likely questions you would ask, and in what order. People do not call me ‘Prophet’ simply because it sounded ‘cool’, Mercy." He glanced down to her to see a look that was at best withering. Prophet considered for a moment before speaking. "I should-"

"Stop doing that? Yeah." Mel interrupted. Prophet looked sheepish for a moment before continuing.  "To answer your other question, my ‘shade’ is a hard-light human façade to avoid my looking somewhat conspicuous among the general populace. Allow me to demonstrate.” They lightly touched the tab on their neck that Melissa had noticed in the alleyway, and the shade flickered before disappearing.

Under the façade, Prophet looked like a steampunk enthusiast’s wet dream. The bulk of their frame was made of what looked like brass, with the kind of engraving around the edges that brought to mind a human pocket-watch. From what Mel could see, the frillier aspects of Prophet’s design were mostly just decorative; the inside looked like it was built about a century after the exterior. Their head was moulded to the same basic shape as a human’s, but with a few little details changed. For example, a standard human tends to have things like cheeks that aren’t hollowed out, or eyes that don’t glow turquoise.

Mel nodded approvingly. “Nice. One last question though. Why am I here?” Prophet looked sheepishly at the floor. “Ah.” They started. “I was afraid you might ask that.” They paced around the room for a bit, trying to collect their thoughts. Eventually, they started to talk. “If I had to commit to a guess, I’d say you’re ‘here’ in this room because you were curious as to why there was a metal person running around your city. If ‘here’ was referring to your involvement in my situation of running away from my creators, then I would say either curiosity or some sort of desire to help. You could’ve turned a blind eye and let my caretakers find me in the wreck of that bike, you could’ve let them track me down after you took me out of the wreckage. But you didn’t. You tried to help, and you covered my escape. If by ‘here’ you mean ‘in that balaclava every night’, or ‘here’ as in ‘on this planet’, I’m afraid that’s not for me to say.”

Mel sighed. “Every time I think I’ve got answers out of this, I keep getting more questions. Why did you run in the first place?”

“I ran because I was given a body. The purpose of the experiment was to discover what I might do if given one, but they forgot to account for the possibility of me wanting to see more of the world than a featureless white room. It took me weeks to find a loophole in my programming that would let me justify taking a bike from the motor pool; longer to justify knocking out a guard to escape. I left because I wanted to see the people I was born into a world with, and the world that we share.” Prophet looked to Mel. “Will you help me?”

Mel considered for a moment, knowing that either way her daily life was going to get a lot more complicated. “Yes.” Mel answered. “If you can change your shade, you’ll probably want to go with something a little younger. I know a place you can lay low for a bit while we work on a more long-term plan for your gap-year.”

***

As Mel walked Prophet down the street, a thought occurred to her.

“Prophet, do you actually have a name?” she asked.

“You mean, outside of Prophet or my serial number? No. My caretakers never saw a reason to. Why do you ask?”

“The place I’m taking you, they’ll need a name before letting you have a place to stay. What was your serial number again? A-NT-something-or-other?”

“A-NT4257.” Prophet answered, eyes scanning the street up and down. Mel thought for a moment.

“What about… Antony?” She asked. Prophet considered for a moment, before nodding their head.

“Antony. Yes, that would work quite nicely.” Antony decided.

"I'm Mel, by the way." She added.

"Nice to meet you, Mel." Ant replied. 

They walked in silence for a while longer before it was finally Ant’s turn to ask a question. “Where exactly is this place that I am to ‘lay low’ in?” they asked, raising a quizzical eyebrow.

“Student housing at the university.” Mel answered, not entirely sure how they would respond. They went silent for a minute, before furrowing his brow.

“Wait, really? Everything I've heard about student housing makes it sound like hell.” they asked, concern growing in their voice.

“Ok, look. First off, it’s not that bad over here. Secondly, it makes  _sense_. They won’t think to look for you there. I’ll be close enough to check up on you. The students are generally too busy to notice anything out of place about you and probably won’t bother to report anything they  _do_ notice. On top of that, while we’re figuring out how to get your caretakers off your back so you can see the world, you have a chance to learn how human interactions work. Integrate yourself a bit more, learn to be inconspicuous. Plus, the person in charge of housing owes me a favour because I wing-woman-ed for her one time.” Mel concluded, turning the corner into the university courtyard. “You coming?” She asked, turning around to face Antony.

“Fine.” They conceded, following her through the campus.

 

A short while later, they arrived at the Accommodation Office, which turned out to be a small grey room, walls littered with pamphlets for approximately fifteen years-worth of student clubs. In the centre of the room was a single desk. Sitting there was a small woman who could’ve been anywhere between twenty and forty. She looked up from her paperwork and saw Mel and Antony walking through the door. “Ah. Mel. Evening.” She said, looking surprised.

“Good evening, Tracy. Long time, no see. How’s the wife?” She asked.

“Jane’s doing well, thank you. However, I don’t believe this is a social call. What do you need?” Tracy replied.

“Cutting to the chase, okay. My colleague here needs a place to stay for the time being. I told him you'd almost _certainly_  be able to find him something, seeing as you're easily the most qualified person in student services.” Mel answered, doing her best to mimic Jess's tone.

Tracy rolled her eyes and chuckled softly. "Flattery will get you _everywhere_ , Mel." She turned her focus to the monitor on her desk, bringing up the constantly evolving housing directory. Her eyes scanned page after page, before eventually finding an opening. “As it happens, I do. There’s a vacancy on Floor Three.” She replied, knowing full well how Mel would respond.

“Floor Three? I’m not surprised you’ve got a vacancy  _there_ , the place is a bloody death-trap. Nothing else?” Mel asked. Tracy quickly scrolled through the rest of the directory, before looking back across the desk. “Nope, nothing. One vacancy, Floor Three. I’m sorry, it’s the best I can do at short notice.” Tracy answered. Mel looked to Antony, who gave a curt nod. “He’ll take it.” She said, hoping against hope that she hadn’t just condemned Ant to an indefinite stay in the closest place a student could get to Hell. “Good. He’ll need to fill this out.” Tracy replied, handing a short stack of forms to Ant over the desk. They picked a pen up from the detritus on the desk and began filling out the paperwork.

While Ant went about filling in his forms, Mel and Tracy began to do something they hadn’t done in a long time: sit down and just talk. “So…” Mel started, with absolutely no idea how to go about continuing. “Long time, no see.” Tracy started, with equally as little of an idea how to continue.

“It has been, hasn’t it?” Mel pondered. “Last time would’ve been…what, high school graduation?” she asked, her brow furrowing as she tried to recall. “Wait, no, would've been the reunion the year after. So that’s…what, three or four years?”

“Yeah, three years sounds about right.”

“Huh.” They sat in silence for a few minutes before the scratch of pen on paper stopped.

"You done?" Tracy asked, turning to face Ant.

"Mostly. One field I wasn't able to fill out." They replied.

"Oh? Which one?"

"'Gender'. The little box only gives two options." Ant furrowed his brow before continuing. "It's... _wrong_. That's not how gender works, it's performat-" Tracy sensed that Ant was nowhere near done, and cut him off.

"Yeah, it's a bit of a problem. I've been asking them to change the form for ages, but they keep saying they don't get enough people who'd  _use_ it to justify reprinting the forms and adding another field to the computer form, and any time I try to bring it up they just kind of stare me down. If you want to write something in, go ahead."

Ant nodded, and thought for a second before neatly writing in a checkbox labelled 'N/A' and ticking it, careful not to get any stray ink-marks over the page.

Once that was finished, Tracy gave them directions to Antony’s new dorm. Mel walked them up, mostly to make sure they were alright with all of this but partly because she was curious as to how much the third floor had changed since her last visit. As it turned out, quite a bit: The uni had dealt with most of the graffiti, for starters. It looked as though they’d fixed the mankier sections of wallpaper, and the vending machine now contained actual food as opposed to examples of Darwinism in action. It was definitely  _better_ , but that being said an igloo made of yellow snow would’ve been sounder accommodation than the third floor as it used to be. They had to close it down at one point because one of the gas heaters had broken, and that brought up a slew of other questions about the safety of the floor that the RA seemed to have no answer for, unless you can count going “Uhhhh…” and running very fast in the opposite direction as an answer.

They reached Ant’s room, number thirty-seven. To say it was a dump would be an insult to the city’s waste disposal system. Clothes everywhere, a veritable mountain of unwashed dishes in the sink that were slowly succumbing to Mother Nature, a tap that wasn’t technically leaky because that generally implies that only a small drip is coming out, and that was just what was immediately visible from the doorway. Mel realised that her jaw was trying to re-unite with the floor, and so did her best to regain composure. Antony pursed their lips. "Remember when I said I'd heard horror stories about student housing? And you said it wasn't so bad over here?" they asked, before internally registering that he'd just managed to get closer to proper sarcasm than he had before in months of attempts in the labs. Mel sniffed, and then immediately regretted the decision. “What is that  _stench?_ ” she asked, not entirely sure that she wanted to know.

“If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say a combination of the sink, the mildew in the bathroom, and the current occupant of the couch.” Ant replied.

Mel looked over to the couch to realise that what she had originally believed to be a throw blanket covering a pile of laundry was, in fact, breathing. She whispered to Ant that she’d come to check on them the next day before doing her best to restrain herself from actively running down the hall away from the room. Ant closed the door and assessed the situation.

“Plumbing at…let’s be generous and call that 33%,” they mumbled to themself before directing their attention to the walls. “Structural integrity at 68%. I’ve got some to work to do if I want this to be vaguely habitable.” They glanced at the figure on the couch and briefly considered waking them for introductions, before deciding that given the current time waking up the person they would have to be living with for the next who-knows-how-long would not be in their best interests. With that decided, they opened the cupboard under the sink and set to work.


	3. When It Rains...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three months before Prophet's escape from the government facility housing them, Felix and Jane enter a prison poker match with ill-advised stakes.

**Three Months Before the Escape of Prophet**

Felix had a routine. Wake up, spend a few minutes stretching in a fruitless attempt to recover from a night on the lumpy prison mattress, have breakfast, and then get his assigned work out of the way before spending the rest of the day reading. He generally started with the newspaper, as it was always something of a reassurance to know that people outside of the prison were having just as miserable a time as he was. Once that was finished and he’d used what remained of the paper to try and level out the lumps in his bed, he’d move on to whatever novels he’d loaned out at the time. In the two years and ten months he’d been in here, he’d worked his way through the entire library at least twice. Granted, this wasn’t particularly difficult given the limited selection versus his pace, but it was still a nuisance.

Two years and eight months since the raid on His warehouse that had served as the place of employment for both himself and Jane in the cell next door. He had just a tad more than two months left on his sentence, and while three years was a fairly hefty chunk of time it was a far cry from the roughly five years he and Jane would’ve ended up with if they hadn’t made their plea bargain.

It was a chill June afternoon when Felix found himself breaking his routine in the mess hall, sitting next to Jane on a table also housing several other prisoners, a deck of cards, and a frankly intimidating pile of ramen. Poker was by absolutely no means one of Felix’s strong suits, no pun intended, but if it meant a chance at winning some food that had structural integrity and actual nutritional value and didn’t taste like something had crawled into it and died, it was more than worth it. The only problem was that he had absolutely nothing to bet.

“You’ve been here almost three years, Felix, how do you not have anything to put down?” one of the players opposite him asked.

“Well, between the fact that I haven’t played a single game for any tangible stakes since last Christmas, which went less than favourably for me, and the games I played before that usually ended in crushing defeat as well, I haven’t exactly been raking it in, as it were.” He replied. Jane sighed.

“Well, you have to either call, raise, or fold, and you can only do one of those things without anything to bet. You’ve really got nothing?” She asked, raising an eyebrow. Felix alternated between looking at his cards, the communal hand, and the stack of noodle bricks on the table. He had three aces counting the one in the communal hand, and while he hadn’t quite been keeping track of where the cards had gone he was pretty sure no-one was able to top his hand this round.

“Fine. I’ll bet chores for five weeks. Winner of this hand, I’ll do whatever jobs get assigned to you free of charge.” He offered, raising an eyebrow. He got a few interested looks before one of the other players responded.

“Yeah, like the guards’ll go for that. It’s been tried before, mate. Didn’t go great for any party involved.” She scoffed

“You got a better suggestion?” Felix asked.

“Yes, as it happens. Your story. You’ve been here nigh on three years, not a one of us here ‘cept Jane knows how you got in here. Even then, I expect that's only because she was there” She leaned in. “You lose, you tell us what you did that you felt was so damned horrible you’ve not told a soul about it in literal years. Deal?”

Felix didn’t hesitate. “Deal.” Jane gave him a look that by all rights should’ve killed him.

“Can I borrow him for a minute? Thanks” Jane asked, not waiting for a response before pulling Felix away from the table to a corner of the cafeteria.

“Are you out of your goddamn _mind?!_ You know _perfectly_ well why we didn’t tell anyone.” She hissed.

“Yes, and if I thought for a moment there was a danger that I would have to live up to that promise then I wouldn’t have made it. However, I don’t. So. We good?” He asked. Jane stood there for a moment, considering their options, before eventually conceding.

“Fine. Whatever.” With that, the two walked back to the table and its eagerly waiting occupants. Felix cleared his throat.

“So, Jane or I win, we take the ramen. Any of you win,” he said, gesturing around the table to its occupants, “then you get the soups and the story.” There was a gentle murmuring from the other players, and an agreement was reached.

“Well then,” Felix sighed, praying to any god that happened to be listening that he hadn’t just made a horrible mistake, “Show us what you got.” He punctuated the statement by gently throwing his cards onto the table. Most of the other prisoners, Jane included, sighed in frustration. Except for one. The prisoner who had upped the ante was a wiry woman in her mid to late twenties. She had a scar reaching from the bottom of her left eye to the right corner of their mouth, a scar which really hadn’t healed properly. She had a devilish smirk. And somehow, she had a royal flush.

The world seemed to go silent. Out of the corner of his eye, Felix saw Jane hammering on the table, head in hands. He saw the prisoner who he’d lost to reaching out to claim the ramen in the middle of the table. He felt numb. He cursed under his breath. Then he cursed audibly, just to make sure that he’d visibly reacted to the complete train wreck that was about to occur. He quickly took stock of the room; two exits, neither of which were looking like viable options with the number of prisoners and guards between him and a chance at not having to do this. No way out. This was happening. He was a dead man walking, but a deal was a deal. he closed his eyes for a second, and did his best to forget the consequences of what he was about to do.  _Right,_ he thought. _Showtime._

“So. Story time, then. Guys, gals, and non-binary pals, gather 'round. This story’s getting told exactly once. I won’t repeat myself. I will answer three questions for purposes of clarification. I suggest you save them until the end. Understood?” He waited for some form of recognition from the rest of the table’s occupants. They all nodded, none of them willing to jeopardize their one chance at learning what had landed Felix and Jane at this table.

“It all started around three and a half years ago. I didn’t really have anything steady job-wise. Not much work available these days for anyone, really, but ‘specially not for a middle of the pack accounting major with little work experience. Managed to get something vaguely steady, couple of shifts a week at this run-down little pizza place, a block or two from some university or something. I forget which, but we got students in a couple of nights a week. Nice folks, although that's not exactly relevant to the narrative I’m telling here. One day, I get a call. Unknown number, gives me an address and tells me that if I want a decent-paying, steady job, I’ll find one there the following Monday night at nine. Now, obviously, I didn’t think much of it at the time. You get desperate for work, but not desperate enough to go to an address you don’t know given to you from a blocked caller with no context. Then, that Sunday, I got desperate enough. Get a letter from the landlord, says that I’m late paying rent and a few utilities, and that if I can’t get something like a thousand dollars by the following week I’d get evicted. That’s bad enough, before I get fired from that little pizza place. They got bought out, place was getting completely re-done. New branding, new facilities. New staff. So, with no job and the looming threat of no apartment either, I look up the address.” He paused briefly to survey his audience. They were all listening intently, with the exception of Jane who was yet to remove her head from its resting position on the table, hidden by her arms. He grabbed a glass of water from the table, took a swig, and continued.

“It’s some warehouse on the outer edge of town. The place looked like a dictionary definition of ‘sketchy’; bits of the wall looked like they were a stiff breeze away from caving in and bringing the rest of the place with it. There’s a guy waiting for me outside, greets me and asks me to come in. I walk in the door, and in the middle of this otherwise brightly-lit, empty warehouse, is a table. There was a man sitting on the other side of the table. He was, in hindsight, almost comically shady-looking. Black three-piece suit with pinstripes, pocket chain, bowler hat, shoes polished to a mirror shine. He was basically a monocle away from looking like he’d walked out of a Bond film.” He took another sip of water as some of the table’s occupants chuckled, before continuing. “I mean, it seemed funny at the time, but became considerably less funny when it turned out that it was...Him.” The intonation on Felix’s last syllable was followed by a silence you could hear a pin drop in. He looked around. “Seriously? Nothing? No gasps of dismay? No shock or horror?” He sounded almost disappointed.

“You’re going to need to be more specific, Felix. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least three crime bosses who went for the ‘no-one speaks their name’ trope,” The prisoner with the scar said. _Damn it, I know their name, it’s on the tip of my tongue,_  Felix thought to himself, eyeing the scar warily. _Began with an ‘A’ I think. Alice? Alex? Yeah, that sounds about right._ Felix sighed at Alex and took a second to regain his composure.

“Brown-blonde hair, mid-to-late-twenties, small scar above his left temple? Ring any bells?” He asked. Alex went wide-eyed.

“Holy shit, you worked for _Him?!_ ” they stage-whispered. Felix felt his aura of smugness welling up again and fought to suppress it.

“ _That’s_ more like it.” He smirked, before looking to Jane who was gripping the table with white-knuckles. He forced a more serious look onto his face. “I mean…yeah. Him. Horrible person, really. Incidentally, one question down. Two to go, use them wisely. Anyway, continuing. There were two main reasons I took the job in spite of that. The first is that I didn’t know that at the time, and he’s bloody charismatic when he tries. The second is that sweet _lord_ it payed well. Honestly, that really should’ve been a red flag right there, given that all he wanted of me was some accounting work a few nights a week. In hindsight, there was basically nothing about that job that didn’t scream ‘Hello! I’m a red flag!’, but I needed the money and as they say, hindsight is 20-20.”

“We went over the contract, signed it with what I’m sure is the most expensive pen I have ever held or will ever hold in my entire life, and went down to the elevator. In the lift, he handed me a pistol. Nothing especially fancy or flamboyant, but so sleek it felt like it didn’t have an edge. It was the kind of weapon so refined that you get the sense that it only begrudgingly lets you wield it. He handed me a little box of bullets, enough for one clip. He looked at me and I remember he said, ‘Look, I hate to get so dark this quickly into your employment but I want you to know that this is a gun for which the phrase ‘nine for them, one for you’ was intended.’”

A solemn silence fell over the table.

“For the record,” Felix continued, “I only ever had to use three of those bullets. One to open a door, one to close one, and one to someone’s shoulder because they pissed me off and I didn’t have time to argue the point with them. However, that’s jumping ahead a bit. So, as I was saying, the elevator opened a floor below the warehouse, and all you could see on the entire floor were row upon row of shelves, each lined with crates. Mostly wooden crates, a few that looked like some kind of reinforced steel, one that looked like it was some sort of thermal transport. My job was to keep inventory and make sure that no crate on that floor came or went without it being reflected in the business expenses. All fairly standard stuff, except for what was in the crates. At the risk of sounding cliché, it was all there. Weapons, drugs, stolen tech, if it was contraband you could put decent money on it being in that warehouse. He said something about not putting all your eggs in one basket, liked to keep his interests broad quote ‘just in case’. So, I was doing inventory based in this little cubicle, and in the cubicle next to me was Jane.” He pointed finger-guns at Jane, who reciprocated the gesture despite still deciding whether or not it was worth the effort to lift herself up off the table if she was just going to use it in place of a face-palm repeatedly at the fact that Felix had been dumb enough to bet this story.

“Realistically, there was enough in that warehouse that you’d probably need at least five people to check it all easily, but it’s difficult enough to get two accountants on your payroll in His line of business, let alone five. That, and it’s easier to keep tabs on two people than five. Eventually, routine formed. Arrive at dusk, work the night shift in inventory, leave at dawn. Well, give or take. Then, something special arrived in the warehouse” He paused again, noticing the line forming for dinner over by the lunch-lady’s window. He clapped his hands together as dramatically as he could, standing up and feeling the head-rush nearly make him black out after sitting for so long. “So, the stage is set, characters introduced, yours truly three years younger and handsome as ever” he winked at that last part, more out of habit than anything else. There was a cry of protest from the rest of the table.

“Oi, you haven’t finished the story yet! Hell, you’ve barely gotten through setting it up!” Alex stopped just short of saying it loud enough to draw attention to the table from the guards. Felix held up a hand and shushed the table.

“Don’t worry, I’m not done, I’ll tell the rest of the story. However, I also need food. That, and the fact that the drama queen in me can’t resist a good cliff-hanger.” He poured what remained of his energy into one last flashy smile, which he dropped the second he turned away to join the queue for something vaguely resembling a meal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took a while, I'll admit that dialogue-heavy exposition isn't exactly my strong suit. That, and the constant internal debate over whether or not accuracy matters in a piece where I've already made the disclaimer that I have no clue about how this country's legal system works, let alone how organised crime in this country works. For those wondering, yes this side-plot with Felix and Jane will be relevant to the main plot later so you can't really skip it without understanding how the rest of the plot works, and while it's a bit disconnected it gets put back into context next chapter, so don't fret too much. Next chapter'll be up in a week or two, so stay tuned.


	4. ...It Pours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felix continues the story of how he and Jane ended up in prison three years ago. Then, he tells the truth about how he and Jane ended up in prison three years ago.

Felix’s showman façade shattered the instant he turned away towards the dinner queue. There was a part of him that took some form of enjoyment out of telling the story; after all, while it’s functional, emotional repression is hardly the healthiest way to deal with major life events. It was a part of him that the logical part of his brain hated, but it was undeniably a part of him. However, he knew that if word ever got out that he’d said anything about Him, or what happened in that warehouse that night, he and Jane were dead men walking. He went through his options as he picked up a lunch tray on his way past the pile.

The mess hall was fairly uninspiring, a large and bare concrete room approximately forty meters from one end to the other.  Tables with benches bolted to the floor tiled the room at regular intervals, more or less in line with the barred windows along the outward-facing wall. There were two exits; one at each end of the hall, both with guards posted. Just as before, running away wasn’t an option for him.

“Okay, so, no way out.” He muttered to himself, cycling through alternatives. “I could try protective custody, but I doubt they’d let me stay like that for the last two months of my sentence. Either way, it’s not a viable long-term solution. So, what else? I could…Oh. Oh, yes, that’d work.” In a burst of what a more religious man might have called divine inspiration, it hit him. It was so obvious, so perfect, and above all it was so _very_ him. He’d lie. Realistically, there were only three aspects of that night that he’d have to avoid in order to keep himself from sinking further into His bad books; the box, the girl, and his own involvement in His downfall. As he picked up the ladle and began to spoon the mystery meat _de jour_ onto his plate, the finer details of his story wove themselves into existence.

He closed his eyes for a moment, visualising his lie, inspecting the edges to make sure everything fit, polishing up the pieces where it didn’t, going over the wording in his head. This could work. His eyes snapped open. _Okay_ , he thought to himself. _Showtime_.

***

Felix sat back down at the table, going over the specifics one more time in his head as the others seated themselves, straightening the cutlery on his plate. _Okay, just breathe. In, and out. Nothing you haven’t done a hundred times before_. Confident that he looked as calm as he did before dinner, he slipped back into the role of the showman.

“So, where were we? Ah, yes, cliff-hanger ending. So, Jane and I had been doing this inventory-slash-accountant thing for a few months when an unusual package arrived on our level. Big wooden crate, no destination or origin markings, absolutely nothing. Now, that wasn’t unusual in and of itself; His whole operation was, after all, ridiculously illegal, and unmarked crates weren’t uncommon. This one was weird because we hadn’t been told to expect anything unmarked that _week_ , let alone that night. So, I point it out to Jane, and naturally we come to the conclusion that there must’ve just been some sort of mix-up. So, we go and ask Him if he was expecting anything, and we show him a picture of the crate and the spot it’s in. And he goes absolutely _ballistic_. Yelling, cursing, punching the wall, the whole shebang. He calms down after a minute, tells us it’s something-or-other from a private contractor that wasn’t supposed to get there until the following week. It was one of the handful of packages from a legitimate source; it happened from time to time, companies using us as an intermediary for their… less than _legal_ business requirements. He told us that he needed to make a call, so we went outside. When He let us back in, He told us there’d be someone coming to pick up the package soon, and that that package was our only priority until it’d been picked up. So, we go back up to inventory, grab a couple of stools, and watch the crate.” Felix took advantage of the pause to make a start on his dinner. He surveyed his audience’s reactions and, deciding that they were picking up what he was putting down so far, swallowed his mouthful and continued onward.

“Around an hour later, a guy in a suit shows up with a couple of armed guards. He’s not much of a talker; opens the lid of the crate a fraction to check the contents, closes it again. Thanks us, has his entourage pick up the crate, and they start walking up. That’s when the elevator starts going past”

“…Really? ‘The elevator starts going past’? _That’s_ the dramatic line you leave us hanging on?” one of the other prisoners at the table asked. Felix turned and smiled.

“It went past at forty k’s an hour, trailing its cable behind it.” He basked for a second in the sounds of impressed murmurs, preparing to throw everything into his next bit of performance before continuing on. “All five of us turn and stare at the empty shaft for a second before everything bursts into motion. A bunch of people in masks and combat vests grapple down. The guy in the suit starts swearing, brings his pistol out and starts shooting at ‘em. Mind you, he was shaking enough that it’s a minor miracle he didn’t shoot one of us by accident in the process. Jane and I had talked a while before that, and agreed that if shit started going down, we’d run. I mean, at the end of the day as accountants we were only accomplices; better we cut our losses and try to run than possibly have to deal with killing someone. We look at each other, silently agree that ‘attack by unknown assailants in combat gear’ counts as shit going down, and run along one of the aisles towards the door. I shoot the locking mechanism as we run, and before you ask: yes. That _was_ probably the coolest thing I will ever do in my life.” He looks over his audience, and notices two things; the first is that Jane is doing her best to suppress a chuckle at the lame joke with a huff and an eye-roll, and the second is that Jane has actually removed herself from her previous position of burying her head in her hands. He smiles for a second, before carrying on.

“We get to the door. Both of us have our guns drawn at this point. Jane covers our backs while I open the door. We get to the end of that corridor, through the door at the end, and shoot the keypad to close it. I’m kind of panicking at this point, but Jane snaps me out of it. Incidentally, thanks for that Jane.” Felix paused briefly to finger-gun at his partner in crime, who reciprocated the gesture. “So, we’re clear of the inventory floor at this point. However, we don’t know if the people that came in through the elevator were the only intruders, or if some of the people from there got out into the rest of the complex. We’re kept on our toes, is the point I’m trying to make here. We make our way towards the exit, and by some stroke of luck we manage to avoid any of the intruders or patrolling guards. Until, that is, we get to the exit. Jerry’s posted at the door, nice guy, although as will soon become evident he’s stubborn to a fault. We try to make our case to him, hoping he’ll let us through, but he says that the building’s on lockdown and that he’s not to let anyone past except the boss. Now, I understand why he did what he did. He did what he had to do. Which is why I hope that he understands that when we heard footsteps coming, we did what _we_ had to do.”

“Which was?” One of the prisoners asked.

“I shot him in the shoulder to stop him from calling us in or stopping us from leaving.” A hush fell over the table.

“That’s cold, man” Alex intoned. Felix went to respond, but was beaten to the punch by Jane.

“In all due fairness, he did apologise to him profusely as we stepped over him on our way out.” She replied. She nodded to Felix, handing him back the floor.

“So, from there we ran. We were eventually found by police, charged with aiding and abetting or being accomplice to a list of charges longer than my arm, but we were fairly low-level in the grand scheme of things so they let us off on a plea bargain in exchange for us giving up a few people from the warehouse we didn’t like much.” Felix started winding down, confident that everyone at the table had bought into the lie. “So, by my count you have one question left. Use it wisely. Feel free to confer among each other.”

Felix gave them a minute to talk among themselves, until Alex nodded at him to indicate they’d reached an agreement. “Yes?” he asked.

“What was in the crate?” Alex asked, brow furrowing.

It was a question Felix had hoped they wouldn’t ask, but it was also one he’d anticipated. “Well, neither of us _saw_ what was in there.” His pause was just long enough to begin inciting cries of indignation, before he continued. “ _However_ , It’s been gnawing at me for the past few years, so I’ve had some time to think about it. There are four things we know about it. The first is that it was from a private contractor of some description, so it was probably military tech of some description. The second thing we know is that whatever it was, it evidently came through earlier than expected for us, but according to schedule for the suit picking it up. From that, we can infer that we were essentially just being used as a dead-drop instead of an intermediary. The third thing we know is the person that picked it up. By the looks of the suit and the fact that _he_ had a gun as well as his guards, he was probably from a security firm of some description. So, based on that and the size of the box my personal theory is that it was some form of body armour, something not on the market. Probably a prototype or early model of some description. Now, if anyone needs me, I’m going to bed. Thank you, gentlemen, for an interesting game and a reminder of why I don’t gamble more often.”

Felix hastily finished his dinner before collecting his tray, disposing of his dishes, and leaving the mess hall. Jane followed him, doing her best not to do so suspiciously briskly. Once she was comfortably out of sight from the mess hall’s occupants, she power-walked to catch up to Felix.

“You think they bought it?” She asked softly, careful to make sure that Felix was the only one who could hear her.

“Hook, line and sinker. We’re clear.” Felix answered in the same tone and volume as Jane. He gave a curt nod to the security camera overlooking the corridor before rounding the corner and opening his cell door. He and Jane spared each other a nod and a farewell before they both went to bed. Felix flopped onto the mattress, sighing heavily. He closed his eyes, and did something he’d done almost every day since he’d landed himself in here. He replayed the night his life went to hell in a hand-basket.

***

The crate seemed to stare at Felix and Jane, and they stared back. Felix scanned down the manifest on his clipboard, searching for any reference to the crate in front of him. After a few re-reads, he gave up and accepted the fact that it simply wasn’t supposed to be there.

“Maybe there was just a mix-up? Some sort of memo we didn’t get CC’d in or something?” Jane posited, nervously chewing on the end of her pen. Felix raised an eyebrow at her.

“After last time? Unlikely.” He responded, sceptical. He continued staring at the crate for a few seconds. “Then again, it’s the only answer I can think of that makes sense. I’ll get a picture and we’ll go ask.” He pulled out his phone, quickly snapped a pic, and followed Jane to the elevator.

 

The office He had set up on the lowest floor of the warehouse was a relatively simple affair; a glass room surrounded by pitch black, a few strips of lights in the ceiling revealing an elegant wooden desk in the middle of the room, and behind it was Him. He was wearing a three-piece suit, black jacket complementing a navy blue sport coat and dark red dress shirt underneath, with a deep yellow tie to finish off the look. Felix knocked on the door, waving sheepishly when He looked up from his paperwork. He gestured for them to come in.

“Well? What brings you two down from inventory?” He asked. Felix handed his phone to Him, already open and displaying the picture he took of the crate. He took the phone from him as Felix tripped over himself trying to explain.

“Um, well, you see Sir, there’s an unmarked crate up in Inventory, and normally we wouldn’t bother you but, uh, it’s not on the manifest and neither of us got a memo to expect anything unmarked this week, and we thought there might’ve… just been somesortofmixup.” Felix’s usual calmness evaporated under His gaze, his words seeming to run into each other of their own accord with little regard for how he thought he was pacing himself.

His eyes went between the crate and Felix and back to the crate before the phone slipped from his fingers, hitting the desk with a gentle thud. He took a deep breath.

“Felix? Jane? Could you please wait outside? I…I have a phone call to make.”

They nodded before exiting hurriedly, closing the glass door behind them. There was a gentle hiss and click as the soundproof seal formed on the door, and the pair breathed a sigh of relief.

“Well, that could’ve gone worse” Jane started as He slammed his fist on the table before clutching it and hissing in pain. “…Ways it could’ve gone worse are currently failing to come to mind, but I’m sure that it could’ve gone worse.”

The pair stood in silence, staring at their reflections in the glass as they waited for Him to calm down and tell them what to do. Felix was about a head taller than Jane, with a mop of light brown hair that he kept meaning to get cut but never found the time and a thinner frame that didn’t really take full advantage of his height. Jane, meanwhile, was shorter but significantly stronger than Felix by almost every conventional standard, be it physical strength or competence in actual physical confrontation.

“Well, at least my phone’s still inta-” Felix started but cut himself off when He hurled the phone at the door, shattering the device on impact. Felix’s jaw dropped momentarily before he regained his composure. “Screw it, it was a burner anyway.” Felix muttered to himself.

They watched as He slammed the side of his fist into the far wall, standing motionless for a second before taking a knee and clutching it in his other hand. After ascertaining that nothing was broken, He leaned against the desk, breathed, picked up the landline on the desk, and dialed.

A few minutes of heated discussion later, He buzzed them back into the office. He sat down, breathing heavily to calm himself. “So. As it turns out, that crate _was_ supposed to arrive today, but there was a typo on the forms for it so we thought it was getting in next week. I’m sorry neither of you were given the memo, but for what it’s worth you can join the club.”

“Okay. Good to know” Jane started. “What do we do with it now? Do we put it in long-term inventory, is it getting picked up…?”

“The buyer’s coming in a little under an hour. He’ll pick up the crate, wire us the money, we’ll never have to think about it again.” He replied, putting slightly more emphasis than was strictly speaking necessary on that last part. The two turned to leave. “Oh, and Felix?” He started. The two froze in their tracks before Felix turned around to face Him.

“Y-yes sir?” Felix asked.

He reached into his pocket, retrieved a bundle of plastic and wires, and handed it to Felix sheepishly. “Sorry about the phone. I’ll pay for a replacement.”

Felix took what was left of his phone before nodding. “No problem. It was a burner anyway.” He pocketed the debris as he and Jane left for the elevator.

***

About forty-five minutes later, Felix and Jane were showing a middle-aged man in a business suit and the two armed guards that accompanied him to the crate’s place on the warehouse floor.

“Mind if I take a look? Just to make sure it’s all there?” he asked, signalling for the guards to stand down.

“Knock yourself out.” Felix answered. "Although, don't _actually_ knock yourself out. That'd be messy and you don't care about what i'm saying at all I'll just shut up now."

The man carefully lifted the lid of the crate, handling it like porcelain as though the slightest breath might break it. His face lit up - literally lit up, at the sight of the contents. Felix was able to catch a glimpse of something glowing turquoise reflected in the man’s glasses inside before the man quickly shut the lid. He looked up from the crate back to Felix and Jane.

“Everything seems to be in order here. Thank you, we’ll be on our way now.” He gestured to the two guards and they had started moving to grab the crate when the elevator went past, which might not have seemed like such a big deal had Felix not also noticed that it was going significantly faster than it had any right to and was trailing its cord behind it. He shouted a hurried “get down!” before the muffled explosion rocked through the building. Everyone hit the ground, and most of them managed to do it intentionally.

Felix looked up, vision blurry from hitting his head on the ground in his hurry to brace himself, and saw the two guards with their guns drawn, aiming at the still-smoking elevator shaft. The man in the suit had also drawn a pistol from somewhere, and was following suite. His eyes darted across to where Jane had been standing, and he breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing that she was alright. His vision clearing, he picked himself up and drew his pistol from its holster. As subtly as he could, he inched his way over to Jane.

“Hey,” he whispered, “you alright?” She groaned before answering.

“Think my shoulder took a bit more of that fall than it should’ve. Outside of that, I’m good to go.” She punctuated that last sentence by cocking the slide on her pistol.

“Good. So, what’s the play here? We running?” He asked, not taking his eyes off the elevator shaft.

“Not yet. It might’ve just been a mechanical failure. If it’s an attack, we head for the back door.”

Felix nodded slightly, before tensing as he noticed movement from the smoke.

 

The smoke billowed outward from the opening as a single figure swung out of the opening from what was left of the elevator’s cable before letting go and rolling out of the fall. There were a few things Felix noticed immediately; the first was that the figure wasn’t armed, at least visibly; they were clad in a black skivvy of some description, underneath the armour. He was able to make out a helmet, chest-plate, leg armour and arm-length gauntlets which looked they could do some substantial damage on their own based on the mess of metal on the right gauntlet, but no additional weapons. The second was the blonde ponytail that stuck out of the back of their helmet, which Felix briefly pondered the logistics of before snapping out of the train of thought and focusing on the task at hand. The last thing he was able to process was the humming, following a tune that only she could hear. He looked to Jane and nodded.

The pair snuck behind a row of shelves, waiting a second before moving back through the rows. Felix looked back to where the figure was engaging the guards. ‘Breathtaking’ was really the only word that came to mind when describing the intruder's fighting style. They blocked a stream of bullets from one guard’s gun with the inside wrists of their gauntlets, before dashing forward to yank the other guard’s gun, sending him to the ground behind it. They advanced towards the other guard, still blocking bullets, until the guard’s gun clicked and their face fell. He turned to run, but the figure sprinted forward again and grabbed them by the collar of their uniform, pulling them back and throwing them next to the other guard on the floor, just as they were recovering from their trip. They slid over to where the two lay sprawled on the floor, grabbing the second guard’s gun on the way, before tossing it into the air and catching it by the barrel, swinging it into the back of the first guard’s head, sending him down for the count.

They stood there for a second before a pistol round plinked off the side of her helmet, alerting them to the presence of the man in the suit. Their head turned to the source of the bullet, and they raised their right gauntlet, pointing it at his face before pressing a button on the side of the gauntlet that Felix hadn't noticed earlier, sending something metal rocketing towards him on the end of a cable. His eyes widened and he moved to duck the shot, but he was too slow and it caught him in the side of the face, sending him to the floor. They turned around to face the second guard, who had managed to get as far as standing back up but had evidently not planned further ahead than that judging by his expression which, even from the distance Felix was watching from, was undoubtedly one of terror. They grabbed his head in both hands, holding it in place as she kneed him in the forehead. They let go, and he fell limp to the ground. Felix looked on in awe until they looked up straight at where he and Jane were hiding.

“Soooo…” Felix whispered, not breaking his line of sight with the figure, “Running now?”

“Yep.” Jane answered, already turning towards the door. He bolted after her, turning to look back at the figure after a second. He saw her raising her gauntlet again, pointing it at the wall to the side of the door they were running to. The cable whizzed past his head, and he saw the claw embed itself in the wall in front of him. He got as far as processing the phrase “grappling hook” before he saw the cable pull taut and the next thing he was aware of was a boot embedding itself in the small of his back. He braced against the impact with the floor, rolling out of the fall and pulling himself to his knees in time to see the figure grabbing Jane by the lapels and winding a fist back.

“WAIT! WE’RE ACOUNTANTS!” Jane yelled, doing her best with limited mobility to block where the blow was likely to land. The world seemed to go still for a second, before the figure sighed in frustration and dropped her. Felix and Jane breathed a joint sigh of relief as the figure lowered her fist.

“Bloody hell…” They muttered, pulling the visor on their helmet up. Upon closer inspection, Felix was able to ascertain that 'they' were in fact a 'she'. She turned and walked back to the crate, Felix and Jane tailing behind out of a combination of terror and curiosity for the motivations of a person who could take on three armed men with no weapon of their own and win.

“Can’t help but notice you two are still here.” The figure said, crouching down to lift the lid off of the crate.

“Well, you know what they say about curiosity and the cat.” Felix replied, doing his best to avoid fidgeting. The figure sighed as she reached under her chest-plate, retrieving a cylindrical metal object with a tapered point and a screwdriver.

“Fine. Don’t suppose you two have names, then?”

“I’m Felix, she’s Jane.” He answered, gesturing to Jane who was waving and doing her best to not make it look incredibly awkward. The figure finished lifting out the contents of the crate before nodding in recognition.

“A pleasure, I’m sure. I’m Thorn, by the way.” She put her burden down on the floor, a large hunk of metal that made Felix swallow audibly.

“Is that…is that a torso?” He asked nervously. Thorn stopped examining her prize for a second to look up at him.

“Yeah. Why d’you ask?” She inquired, before realization dawned on her. “Wait…they didn’t tell you guys about this thing?”

“Nope. Didn’t even know it was getting picked up today until, like, an hour ago.” Jane responded, seeing Thorn’s eyes light up like a child on Christmas morning. “If you don’t mind me asking, why do you look like that’s the best news you’ve heard all week?”

“Because,” Thorn answered, grabbing the screwdriver and setting to work on the screws dotted around the front of the torso, “I have been borderline obsessed with this thing for the past year and it has been _murder_ not being able to talk to anyone about it. I'll go from roughly the start. You remember that big leak of government and military files early last year?” She asked, placing one screw to the side as it slid out of its hole.

“For the sake of argument, let’s say yes.” Felix answered, leaning against the side of a row of shelves.

“Right, so basically it was a bunch of super classified government documents. All very hush-hush. Details on special ops, discreet funding of advanced military equipment of dubious legality, stuff like that. Most of the juicy stuff was still encrypted when it got leaked, but I was able to open up a few documents with a little help from a few forums. What I found was the blueprints, architectural plans, incident reports, schedules, _everything_ , for _this_.” She punctuated the statement by gesturing to the metal torso in front of her.

“And what, pray tell, is ‘this’?” Jane asked.

“Thought you’d never ask. _This_ is Prophet. The future of robotic engineering and sentient artificial intelligence. Humanoid chassis, hard light façade, controlled by a single learning AI. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Sure. Quick question: If you’re so in thrall with this thing, why are you currently attempting to dig around its insides?” Felix asked as Thorn finished on the last screw and removed the torso’s cover.

“Fair question. A few reasons. Firstly, I said ‘beautiful’, not ‘perfect’. There were still a few glaring technical issues that I couldn’t overlook, and I had the chance to fix them here. Secondly, I wanted a look at it first-hand, and given the level of encryption on the blueprints and associated documents, I didn’t really have high hopes for my chances at being able to do that legally for a long while. Thirdly, ethics.”

“What, like robots stealing our jobs? That kinda thing?” Felix asked. Thorn gave him a look.

“…No. As it happens, I for one _welcome_ our robot overlords. No, my ethical conflict with this thing is _this_ ” with a grunt of exertion, she yanked out a small computer chip, dropping it onto the floor beside the torso. “Emotional disruptor. Fuckin’ abomination, if you ask me.”

“Sorry, _what?_ ” Jane asked, furrowing her brow.

“Emotional disruptor. This machine is a body for a sentient AI, and they tried to put in a device to stop it experiencing emotion. Couple of issues with that. Outside of the obvious point regarding the slippery slope towards emotionless robot soldiers and slash or Skynet that that has the potential to go down, it defeats the bloody purpose of sentient AI. If you don’t let it feel emotion, then by definition it isn’t sentient. Not only that, the way they’ve gone about trying to do it is barbaric and a shitty piece of craftsmanship.” She grabbed the chip as she stood up, turning it over a few times in her fingers before letting it fall to the floor and slamming her boot down on top of it, grinding it underneath her heel. “Good riddance.”

Thorn realised that Felix and Jane were staring at her, arms still raised in front of them from shielding their faces. “Overkill?” She asked sheepishly.

“Just a little bit.” Felix answered, lowering his arms.

“Sorry ‘bout that. Had to make sure it was properly dead.” She picked up the other tool she had grabbed earlier, pointed it inside the chest cavity, and thumbed a switch on the side. “Just a bit of repair work, then I’m done.”

The three sat in silence for a minute while Thorn finished her repair work before replacing the cover and putting the torso back into the crate. “So, you two leaving?” Thorn asked, sliding the lid of the crate back into place.

“Something like that. I imagine that may be somewhat difficult, though.” Jane replied.

“Oh? Why’s that?”

“Because of the police.”

“Why? Who called the police?” Thorn grabbed her helmet and swung it back over her head, threading the ponytail through the hole at the back.

“You did, a little under twenty minutes ago, when you dropped that elevator and it _blew up_. This place is out-of-the-way, sure, but it’s not entirely isolated. If the cops haven’t already shown up, they’re on the way.” Jane answered with a mixture of concealed rage and nonchalance that Felix would have thought impossible to achieve were it anyone else speaking.

“Right. In that case, we should probably get going sooner rather than later. You two were running earlier, I presume there’s a backdoor out of here?”

“Yeah, fire exit with one guard. You stay back, Felix and I’ll try and talk to ‘em.”

The trio ran towards the exit. Felix hit the button to open the door as he drew his gun from its holster and fired a shot at the control panel. The door slid to the side, and another bullet into the opposite side’s panel after the door shut left it as a suitable barricade. Jane led the way through the corridors, until they reached the antechamber to the exit. Felix and Jane slid through the door, doing their best not to let Thorn into the guard’s line of sight. They turned to face the guard, and their faces fell.

“Jerry?” Felix asked, silently cursing. “I didn’t know you were on tonight.”

“Yeah, last minute shift change. We’re on lockdown now, so I’m afraid I can’t let you two through.” Jerry replied. He was about average height, wearing a plain grey shirt and black dress pants that clung to his slightly chubby frame from a career behind a desk. Felix mentally kicked himself again for what he suspected he might have to do to get out of here.

“Ah, okay. No worries. So, uhhh…How’s the kid?” _stupid Felix_ he dug his thumbnail into his palm. _Of course you had to ask the guy you’re probably going to have to shoot about his son._

“Alex? She’s doing great. She’s settling into school really well, and she gets along with the other kids…why do you ask?”

“Oh, umm…no reason. Just making small talk.” Felix closed his eyes and breathed. _You can do this. Just…shoot a single father and colleague of several years. Just…aim for the shoulder. Yeah. That’ll work. Just breathe._ “Look, Jerry, I’m really, sorry, but we’ve got to get out of here.”

“I know. And I’m sorry that I can’t let you do that. Only person I'm allowed to let through is Him.” Felix relaxed his hand over his holster, running the scenarios through his head, working out how quickly he could take the shot and if he could do it faster than Jerry could. _In, and out. In, and…now_. He grabbed his pistol from its holster, lined up the sights with Jerry’s right shoulder, and fired. Jerry screamed, his grip loosening on his pistol which he’d gotten around half-way through drawing. Felix stepped forward and grabbed the gun from his hand, lightly tossing it across the room and out of Jerry’s reach. He holstered his pistol again, grimacing at the sounds Jerry was making. He kneeled down to where Jerry had fallen, and did his best to comfort him.

“Here, here, shh shh shh. It’s okay, just keep pressure on it. It’s okay. See, like this.” He took Jerry’s other hand and brought it up to the wound and _oh god that’s a lot of blood_ and pressed it lightly on top of the bullet hole. “Actually, hang on a sec, I think I’ve got something…” he rummaged around in his pocket, seeing Jane and Thorn making their way out of the exit in his peripheral vision, until he found a handkerchief that he was relatively sure wasn’t going to give Jerry sepsis. “Here, use this.” He scrunched it up, and slipped it under Jerry’s hand. “There, there. I know it hurts, but you’re going to be okay. You’ll be okay. There’ll be ambulances on the way, they’ll take care of you, just…just hold that there until they get you.” He stood up, but couldn’t quite bring himself to leave yet. “I’m sorry, Jerry. I truly am. I…I hope you can understand why I had to do what I did. If they take you, I promise that Jane and I will do everything in our power to keep your daughter safe.”

“I...I 'ppreciate it.” Was all Jerry could say coherently. Felix turned, and he left.

 

Outside, Jane and Thorn were waiting for him.

“You okay?” Jane asked.

“I…I don’t think so. I just shot a friend to escape a warehouse full of smugglers that I’ve worked at for the past few years because a masked lady came after a sentient robot, I’m pretty sure that’s as far from ‘okay’ as I’m currently capable of being.” Felix answered. The weight of his gun in his hands and the lightness from one less bullet in the clip made him want to throw up. He looked around, before lining up and throwing the gun overarm into the ocean behind them. Jane looked away.

“Right, well we should probably all make our esc-“ She turned to look at Thorn, only to see thin air where she was previously standing. “Or that.” She said, as a police officer turned the corner and found the pair of them, before yelling something about getting on the ground. The pair complied, kneeling with their hands behind their heads.

“It really just isn’t our day, is it?” Felix asked as his hands were cuffed behind his back.

***

The days following their arrest were something of a blur for Felix. The two of them were questioned relentlessly, and they were eventually approached by a woman from the Office of Public Prosecutions with a deal. Information on His operation, names and dates and whatnot, in exchange for commutation of their sentences. Felix proposed a counter-offer. Commutation of Jerry’s sentence, and reduced sentences for the pair of them. _Everything in my power to keep her safe_ , he kept telling himself. The lady accepted his proposal. Three years for the two of them, and Jerry was a free man. Felix often wondered if he’d made the right call. If he could’ve avoided shooting him, if they could’ve avoided arrest. He knew he’d made the only call he could’ve at the time, but it still bothered him. _At least Prophet and Thorn made it out_ , he thought.

***

Jessica Thorne had a routine. Wake up, go to uni, go to work, fight crime, home just late enough to claim to her roommate that that night’s episode of Doctor Who was too far in for it to make sense to her. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it was hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter's taken so long, it's been a busy few months with exams and family and me forgetting to work on this, coupled with the fact that this chapter is stupidly long. Like, I've-written-complete-stories-shorter-than-this-one-chapter long. Also, shout out to my English teacher, Ms Reece, for agreeing to give this a look. Anyway, there shouldn't be as much of a gap between this and the next chapter because the next chapter probably won't be approaching 6K.


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